Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday March 31, 2010 @11:37PM
from the new-and-improved dept.

Hypoon writes "The GNOME project is proud to release this new version of the GNOME desktop environment and developer platform. Among the hundreds of bug fixes and user-requested improvements, GNOME 2.30 has several highly visible changes: new features for advanced file management, better remote desktop experience, easier notes synchronization and a generally smoother user experience. Learn more about GNOME 2.30 through the detailed release notes and the press release."

It's interesting to note that, in Nautilus, Browser-mode is now the default over Spatial-mode. Years ago, in the 2.0 days with whatever-that-company-was-that-made-Nautilus and the wonderful new HIG and whatnot, the switch to Spatial was heralded as a major improvement and modernization. Now, like many of those huge and bitterly disputed changes, the grand step forward is being reversed with only a slight mention.

And yet, despite the reversal of so many of those improvements, I do think it's making Gnome better; it's just taking a very long time for the idealists of days past to realize that their ideals didn't really work in the real world.

All those apparently counter-productive "improvements" implemented by Gnome and KDE these past few years worked out really well for me. They taught me not to rely on a one-size-fits-all-full-bloat DE and instead work with more minimalist tiling WMs and custom scripting the rest for myself. So much nicer, faster, cleaner, and more satisfying, plus I learned a lot. My desktop never looked better, and my productivity has never been higher.:)

1) A sync framework built-in, for syncing different mobile devices. Everyone has one or more mobile devices now, nothing works really well. My Windows Mobile phone, PDA, my iTouch, etc, are not working well. SynCE and Multi-sync are not up to task (yet). This might be a Linux issue, but it would great too if Gnome could provide a nice syncing framework, if no one at a lower level would want to pick it up. Anyway, I really don't care where that issue should be lied in, I just wish my mobile devices work nicely with my linux laptop. It's annoying having to manage my contact, calendar, task list etc in Windows inside a VirtualBox, in order to be able to sync.

2) Evince should take a look at PDF Xchange PDF viewer. I want to be able to add notes, highlight, etc, in my PDF ebooks. Installing PDF Xchange Viewer on Wine is an ugly solution (font and UI are way ugly), and it's too slow.

3) F-Spot is slow...

4) Anjuta, can we do emacs key binding yet? Haven't used it for a while though.

5) Network Connections should apply network settings after changes, not having to ask users to restart networking service or reboot. Ok, probably just an Ubuntu issue.

6) Gnome should wake up probably after a suspend. I have no such issue with other desktop or WM, just Gnome. I tolerated it so far, coz I don't do suspend that much, and prefer to hibernate. But it's still annoying when you need to do it.

7) iBus seems to have a bad habit of hanging from time to time, especially when you are typing too fast, and you have to switch between input methods very often. And start up is slow too.

I'll try the new version soon, hope to see some of my problems solved. Regardless, thanks a lot for the hard work, really appreciat it.

I strongly preferred the spatial back in the day, because the browser mode was next to useless. The breadcrumbs convinced me to switch back, but it took a while for browser mode to actually become better, instead of just being familiar to Windows Explorer users.

Personally I think KDE is the one that is actually making the real advances. I think I really noticed this when they reinvented the desktop where everything is a plasmoid, instead of the desktop simply being a dumping ground.

It had Gnome compatibility, but didn't clutter up the desktop with real estate-stealing nonsense or kick off a bunch of annoying memory- and disk-hogging "features", such as indexing, that I don't want, as do both Gnome and KDE.

To justify the presence of the Mono libraries. Why else include this dreadfully slow application when there are much faster, more fully featured, rival applications ready to take its place.

Miguel must have all his fingers and each of his twelve toes crossed right now, because Mono is the only justification for his salary and share options at Novell. Even the men in suits would get a bit suspicious if none of the software the Miguelistas were producing was used by anyone. At least forcing users to use it creates the illusion that it is needed. Without the inclusion of Mono, Miguel and his band of happy followers would be out on their sorry asses (well, maybe not asses, donkeys perhaps, and even then probably just the one between the lot of them).

Care to recommend an alternative? I'd look myself, but repo descriptions are hardly... Well, descriptive. You sound like you've used a few, and know enough about them to make an informed recommendation.